Black Joe Lewis on the Morning Mix

The album title, Electric Slave, stems from Joe Lewis’ realization that America is dependent electronics and how it’s de-socialized us. “I just thought it was an interesting topic. I just thought about how people go to concerts and they don’t watch the concert. They just sit there on their phone the whole time filming it to watch it later even though it happening right now in front of you,” explains Joe Lewis.

Joe Lewis’ appreciation for sci-fi literature also influenced the album Electric Slave. Lewis mixes his sci-fi roots with the overall theme of “people being bound by their electronics” theme of the album. “I’ve always been a sci-fi fan. I read a lot of Orwell and Buckley and stuff like that, so I thought it’d be cool to write my own sci-fi story. The Electric Slave, the future of it, slaves to the robots, it’s a sci-fi story,” states Lewis.

Although a primary theme of Electric Slave is how we are bound to our electronics, Joe Lewis sees an upside to technology. “If it’s used for the right reason I think technology is good. But I don’t think people will use it for the right reasons,” added Lewis.

Electric Slave is a different sound than the two previous Black Joe Lewis records. In fact, Joe Lewis actually considers ElectricSlave to be their debut album. “It’s the first one [album] that I feel like we got to go in and do completely what we wanted to do. We had a different line up and kind of a new sound. I just felt like the first two records didn’t represent what we sounded like when we were live. We wanted to make this one to true to our sound,” explains Lewis.

Through the years, Black Joe Lewis has endured some lineup changes. Joe Lewis discusses the current lineup and how it allows the band to achieve its sound, “It’s just a good lineup and I think it works pretty well for us. It’s pretty minimal, I enjoy it [singing and guitar playing]. It’s straight up blues progressions and some of them are one chord forever. We just try to do what we do so we can sound like the way we do.”

You can find Black Joe Lewis’ “debut” album Electric Slave out in stores and online now.